Technical Field
This invention relates to devices for coordinating the movements of employees, and specifically to a device and method for maximizing employee coverage of a sales area in a retail store.
State of the Art
Retail stores often have a number of employees whose job is, partially or wholly, to maintain a presence on a sales floor of the retail store. The employees are there to handle any need that arises on the sales floor that requires resolution by an employee, such as helping customers who need assistance while shopping, or monitoring the status of certain areas of the store. Customers who are shopping, for example, may need help finding an area of the store or a specific product. It is in the best interest of the retail store to help customers as quickly as possible, without making the customer search too hard or wait too long for assistance. Employees whose job it is to provide help to customers are considered to be in “coverage” mode, meaning they are a part of a network of employees that provide employee coverage of the retail store. In order to maximize employee coverage of an area or a store, it is best to keep employees distributed throughout the area or the store instead of bunched up in some areas and spread too far apart in other areas. To keep employee coverage maximized, those employees that are in coverage mode try to keep away from other employees that are also in coverage mode, so that their respective territories do not overlap. This can be accomplished visually, by one employee changing direction and moving away when they see another employee. However, it is often hard for employees to visually maintain separate territories, due to store shelves and other fixtures that block views, and the fact that employees in coverage mode may have their attention directed towards things besides watching where their fellow employees are.
Accordingly, what is needed is a device and method for directing employee movement that will detect when two employees in coverage mode get too close, and send an instruction to one or both of the employees to change their direction of motion, thus keeping a minimum distance between employees in coverage mode.